Safaricom reported a record high data traffic last Sunday, at the height of the finals matches of two major continental tournaments in both Europe and America- as many Kenyans opted to livestream the ties on the mobile phones and tablets.
Disclosures from the telco indicate that the data traffic streaming through its network as Spain faced England in Berlin hit 3.96 terabytes which was the highest since the firm was established two and a half decades ago.
The telco says the milestone was achieved, thanks to its aggressive investment in more cable networks.
It has helped reduce latency, which is the delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction for its transfer.
“This is very exciting for us, having no issues and no complaints as Kenyans streamed good quality football from overseas using the undersea cable network in which we have invested quite heavily,” stated the company’s chief technology and information officer George Njuguna.
In its illustration of the milestone’s magnitude, Safaricom says one would need up to 100,000 phones, each with a capacity to hold 128 gigabytes, to hold all the data that was streaming through its network on Sunday night.
The telco further says that as of the beginning of this year, its entire international data throughput was about 500 gigabytes.
This capacity has since been increased to 700 gigabytes.
Currently, Safaricom boasts six cables that are connected to undersea networks, which is the largest compared to other players in the region.
“Anytime we’re streaming games, this information is coming from data centres that are outside the continent most of the time.
“So that means we have to have an undersea cable network with enough capacity to carry because there are times and there are some networks that can’t stream on that,” stated Mr Njuguna.
The firm says it has continued to upgrade its network sites in a bid to avoid congestion during data sessions.
The site cables are increasingly being linked to content data networks that have landed in the country by companies such as Google, Meta, and X.